TIME Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” is meant to highlight “the people who inspire us, entertain us, challenge us and change our world.”

The list consists of “breakouts, pioneers, moguls, leaders and icons.”

Included among The TIME 100, is Apple CEO Tim Cook whose accompanying article was written by Apple Board of Directors member, Al Gore.

“It is difficult to imagine a harder challenge than following the legendary Steve Jobs as CEO of Apple. Yet Tim Cook, a soft-spoken, genuinely humble and quietly intense son of an Alabama shipyard worker and a homemaker, hasn’t missed a single beat,” Gore writes. “Fiercely protective of Jobs’ legacy and deeply immersed in Apple’s culture, Cook, 51, has already led the world’s most valuable and innovative company to new heights while implementing major policy changes smoothly and brilliantly.”

“He has indelibly imprinted his leadership on all areas of Apple — from managing its complex inner workings to identifying and shepherding new ‘insanely great’ technology and design breakthroughs into the product pipeline,” Gore writes. “Cook’s personal discipline, physical regimen and work hours reflect a philosophy summarized in his 2010 Auburn University commencement speech, in which he quoted President Lincoln: ‘I will prepare, and someday my chance will come.'”

Gore writes, “Highly ethical and always thoughtful, he projects calmness but can be tough as nails when necessary. Like the great conductor George Szell, Cook knows that his commitment to excellence is inseparable from the incredible ensemble he leads at Apple. Szell was noted for saying, ‘We begin where others leave off.’ Cook’s chance has come. What a beginning!”

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20 Comments

As I see it Cook is no Steve, but you could argue he doesn’t need to be. So far he’s just tinkered around the edges of the blueprint. As long as he can retain the team SJ put together Apple will flourish for at least a decade. However, it’s when Apple launch their next big thing that we’ll see Cook begin to shine or not.

Some people believe that truth is what they believe. That faulty circular logic is highly prevalent across the U.S. The arrogance of non-scientists casually disparaging the results of years of work by subject matter experts that has been thoroughly reviewed and evaluated by their peers is astounding to me. That is armchair quarterbacking at is worst, because the ultimate goal is to steer the general populace blindly along a path with no regard to the potential adverse consequences.

Climate change is a fact of life. Tens of thousands of years ago massive glaciers covered much of the North American continent. Over the past 30 years many glaciers across the world have significantly retreated or even disappeared. That is climate change. There is no doubt that many of the chemicals that human beings are pouring into the atmosphere – CO2, methane, etc. – have an effect on transmission of radiation. The important question is, to what degree are these human-induced changes impacting the energy balance of the Earth? An important related question is, how quickly can the natural damping system of the Earth respond to human-induced inputs to the energy balance, and what will be the ultimate effect in terms of a new equilibrium state for the environment on Earth?

That effect may end up being relatively small, if we are lucky. But to deny that humans are having any effect whatsoever on the Earth’s climate is asinine – hubris combined with ignorance of the highest order. If the worst happens, then you certainly deserve to join the ranks of the extinct.

You think it is “disgusting” for Al Gore to write something that contains a drop-dead obvious conclusion that anyone else would write.

I don’t. Sometimes—even when one can imagine all manner of ways Al Gore might benefit from stating something obvious like how Tim Cook is ‘influential’—a simple truth is still a simple truth.

You don’t see people jumping down the throat of the Pope when he writes something charitable about God even though one might imagine all manner of benefits God could confer upon the Pope for the favor.